Havoc

It's been years since we had a Joe Friday review, but this certainly isn't the way we expected to be bringing it back! Striking fear into the opposition. When reviewing McFarlane Toys' Fortnite Raptor action figure, we joked (because he was wearing a ski mask and dressed in brown and yellow) that he was a "Tiger Force" version of GI Joe's Beachhead. Which was just us being silly, but today we're looking at the Jazwares figure Havoc, which is clearly just Firefly. He's so Firefly that you can stand him next to some other GI Joes (and pseudo-Joes) and everyone will intuitively "read" him as Firefly without even thinking about it. We know Fortnite loves its pop culture references, but dang, dude! The Havoc skin was available exclusively as part of the "Twitch Prime Pack," a set available to anyone who linked their Epic Games account to their Twitch account between March and May of 2018. For the most part, it uses the same model as Raptor, just done in a different color. So that means he's wearing a jacket with a fur collar, pants with armored kneepads, big lace-up boots, and has three shotgun shells on a strap going across his chest. Obviously these aren't going to be the same molds, because McToys and Jazwares aren't doing their toys in the same scale (and also are two different companies), but that just allows us to compare and contrast the ways the two work. Havoc doesn't have Raptor's big headphones, but he does still wear the full balaclava - which is what you'd expect from "Not" Firefly. And of course, his colorscheme is now head-to-toe gray camouflage. As with the other Jazwares Fortnite Legendary Series figs, he has alternate faces, though his are... less than inspired. Now, there isn't a lot you can do with a guy in a full head covering, but there had to be something, right? We get one with the mask pulled back (through the eyehole?) to show us his face, while the other just... repositions the eyebrows slightly? That's as bad as Crackshot. The paint on the second masked face is darker than on the normal one, which you could take to mean that a bomb blew up in his face, except the hard line between "dark" and "light" kills that illusion. At that point they should have just gone full GI Joe and done a blank face. Firefly Havoc moves at the head, pecs, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, fingers, chest, waist, hips, thighs, knees, shins, ankles, and toes. The "butterfly" pecs don't really add a whole lot of value to the playability, just a millimeter or two back and forth, and the flared shoulders of his costume don't do anything to help it either. The hips are really stiff, but they still move way easier than the waist does. It's so tight I initially thought he didn't have one! In addition to the Havoc skin, the Twitch Prime Pack included an exclusive Harvesting Tool and Back Bling. (Also a Glider and a second outfit, but those aren't included here as accessories, so we're ignoring them for now.) The backpack is the "Backup Plan," a dark camo piece with metallic red bombs strapped to it, while the pickaxe is the Instigator, a fancy, tactical-looking tool done in dark silver and that same red. It's got a sharp tip, a wedge tip, and a tiny spike on the end. He also gets a grenade, the same Chug Jug Rabbit Raider had, and his gun is the Thermal Scoped Assault Rifle (a superdeformed M4 carbine with the SOPMOD Block I package), the rarest weapon in the game; at its normal drop rate, you'd have to open 1,250 chests before you found one! As far as Fortnite skins go, Havoc is boring. But as far as 6" scale GI Joe figures go, Firefly will fit right in! I know that's the only reason I got him. -- 05/01/20